


in which sirius black has some emotional intellenge

by Siriuslysad



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: The Prank
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:34:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23528515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siriuslysad/pseuds/Siriuslysad
Summary: a series of conversations that occur after 'the prank'.
Kudos: 19





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> um yeah basically i hate the prank but i still think its an important part of sirius' character arc so yeah um. i wanted to write this in a way that shows that sirius has to deal with his own guilt and stuff and yeah hes surprisingly emotionally intelligent and doesnt act like a dummy so yeah hope you enjoy
> 
> cw for brief mention of suicide and self harm too btw
> 
> (also i hc that sirius' mother is russian and his father french so he speaks russian and french but the russian works nicely with this so yeah)

01

Sirius black couldn’t breathe- his lungs were caving in and his head was going foggy, his stomach eating itself and his eyes slowly burning with the effort of keeping in tears. His thoughts were swimming foggily, his brain too busy setting fire to his lungs to stop and comprehend any of them. He knew one thing, and one thing only- He had five minutes. James had warned him, told him she was on her way and before Sirius could hear any more his eyes had gone black and a fresh wave of nausea had engulfed him. He had five minutes before she came and five minutes before she opened his eyes to the destruction he had caused and confirmed all of his worst fears by simply being there. He had five minutes and he didn’t know what to do. Sure, he thought, as he heeled his palms into his eyes to stop them from crying, sure he could always just run away. He could steal a broom and run from reality, away into the Scottish countryside where nobody would find him and nobody remember what he did and who he was and all the events of that night would just be a memory (although he knew in reality it would never just be a memory). He could jump, too. He could escape the cruel nature in which life seemed to favour, the cruel nature of regret and learning and growing and instead just jump before anything caught up to him. He’d die on impact with the ground. Yet somehow, despite the fog, Sirius knew, in that moment, that either of those options would be a worse crime than the previously committed. The thought comforted him slightly, later, that he did neither. He knew that they would confirm his deepest worry- that he was exactly like them- so he stayed put. Rather, He stayed in his windowsill and waited for his actions to catch up with him, because they were bound to catch up eventually. He waited for the footsteps he knew would resound around the stairwell he was sat in- coming from above or below- come to deliver reality. It was childish, really, yet still Sirius had checked.

He’d checked with the back end of his cigarette on his wrist that it was, in fact, real life, and he wasn’t just dreaming up the whole stupid stunt in some fantastical recantation of the struggles of morality and self inflicted doom. No, he knew this was real life. He’d done it, and he wasn’t dreaming. In the three minutes left he checked again. He put out his barely started cigarette on his wrist again, and again, and again- just to pass the time. He knew it was stupid- the pain would bring him no relief- yet he couldn’t stop. So in the remaining three minutes of his free will he burnt his wrist and wasted a cigarette on reality, hoping every time that maybe this time he wouldn’t feel the hiss of pain and he could pretend that this was all a bad dream and he could roll over and go back to sleep. Eventually he ran out of wrist space. By that point the footsteps had begun. Where breathing was once hard now it was near impossible; where tears were barely being held in now they were flowing freely; where thoughts were once somewhat cohesive now they were diminishing altogether. The footsteps got closer.

“Good evening, Mr Black” Sirius choked on air as he tried to reply, his response to the lady standing above him ending up cracked and broken.

“Hi, Professor McGonnagal.” His voice sounded small. She sat, without a word, on the step next to him.

”I assume you know why I’m here”, she said, once settled. She had a book clasped in her hands. He could only nod. Her tone never faltered as she spoke. “Mr Black, as logical as it may seem to you in this moment, you are not in fact in trouble”, she paused, allowing his shaky breaths to fill the silence before resuming. “You made a mistake- a grave mistake- but a mistake nonetheless. We do not punish people for making mistakes.” He looked up at her through his tears, and his expression was hard and pained.

“What I did to remus”, his voice shook, “wasn’t- it wasn’t like dropping a pen. It wasn’t like calling you mum on accident. It wasn’t like flooing to the wrong fucking address, Professor, it wasn’t like that so don’t fucking act like what I did was-” It hurt to think about what he did- it hurt to know that he’d done what he’d done. his breathing quickened yet again, yet his panic was interrupted.

“Sirius, you have to breathe.” And he did. He breathed broken breaths until they were no longer fragmented with sobs, until they were no longer shaky and no longer in danger of disappearing completely. And once he had breathed, she continued. “Sirius, I want you to listen to me.” He nodded, eyes still trained hard on his boots. “You need to listen to me because I’m going to tell you what’s going to happen- I’m going to tell you the truth about what’s going to happen- and you are going to listen and then I am going to ask you questions and you are going to answer them and then we are going to resume life, understood? You can cry, if you need, I won’t deny you that- but you must listen” He made a small noise in response, and she resumed. “This situation is not going to magically sort itself out. I do not envy the anxiety you are going to feel- because you are going to feel it. Sirius, You’re a good person and when good people make mistakes they get eaten up from the inside with guilt and I know that that is happening to you, and will continue to happen to you for longer than you ever thought feasible. You cannot let it get the best of you. You cannot let it ruin you. You have to learn from it. I know its hard and I know that you will probably be thinking but why do I learn from this while seemingly everybody else gets to learn from their own little, trivial mistakes- and I know its not fair. But there is no answer to that question, it will not do you any good to dwell on it.” She placed a reassuring hand between his shoulder blades.

“Sirius, I am not going to punish you, because I do not believe a punishment will do you any good- no amount of detentions will equate to the lesson you will learn in the following weeks. I will not waste your time." She paused, drawing breath, before continuing.

“And I know you don’t, Sirius, but do not think that that means you haven’t don’t something terrible. Do not think for a second that what you did is any less horrific than you are thinking it right now because let me tell you, it is. Your mistake was absolutely unthinkable- I do not need to tell you that because you already know that. You don’t need to be told again” She waited a beat with a sigh. “Im not going to excuse your behaviour, yet I’ll admit its not fair. Its not fair that this happened to you at 16 and now you’re left to deal with the fallout of a mistake usually only performed blindly by adults experienced enough to come out on top. That its happened to you at 16 is not fair at all. With that being said and with that being true, however, it is not only not fair on you. What you have done to Remus- the hurt you have caused to Remus is not fair.”

Sirius’ breathing quickened at that. It was hard enough to process that he’d betrayed Remus in his mind, and yet it was harder still to hear it said out loud- as though the physical words were simply confirming what was already true. His eyes prickled painfully, and the weight of her hand on his back began to suffocate him. “Much like yourself, Remus has had to deal with things far too early in life, and this is yet another one. You will both experience it differently- You have to learn to forgive yourself and Remus will have to learn to forgive you and neither is easier than the other. So, Sirius, you owe it to him to endure this. You owe it to him to learn from what you have done. Its not fair that this lesson being taught cannot just be taught to you and you alone- its being taught at the expense of another and so you must learn from it. Do not throw it away. Make use of the horrific circumstances thrown at you- its a mean feat, I know.” She shifted slightly, trying to gage Sirius’ expression which was hidden expertly beneath his hair. She cursed his blasted hair under her breath, before continuing gravely.

“Im not going to tell you that this will all be solved in five years, Sirius, because truth be told it might not be. This is not a case of ‘if it wont matter in a week, so don’t sweat it’.” Under the palm of her hand, Sirius’ breathing began to quicken. He was beginning to panic and so she rubbed circles on his back as she spoke again.

“Tell me why you did it” He looked at her, not blinking. His eyes were bloodshot, yet dry.

“Why does it matter” he spoke bitterly. “Motives do not excuse actions, Minerva. You and I both know that”

She smiled at that- at the wisdom shared with her in such a way that made it seem like every human on the earth knew it- thrown away casually like it wasn’t wise beyond its years. She smiled at the irony in which it was being shared, too- from a disgraced teenage boy to his professor, that was delivered with the air of an old friend reminiscing upon a piece of guidance found years ago. “I just wanted to know”

“Because”, Sirius said through gritted teeth, swiping his hand over his face in frustration, seeming again wiser then any boy of his age should be. “He wouldn’t fuck off. No matter what I did, no matter what I said, he just wouldn’t fucking leave me alone. He was here, you know”, he jabbed a finger to his temple as he stared his professor down. “He wouldn’t fucking get out of my head. I couldn’t get him out of my fucking head and I was so sick of it and I wanted him gone, professor. I don’t know if you know what it feels like to want someone gone in the way I wanted him gone. I didn’t care-” the revelation shocked him as he said it “- how he went. I just wanted him out. I didn’t fucking care about the fucking logistics I just fucking wanted him dead. I wanted him dead so bad. I just wanted him to leave me alone”, he finished in a small voice.

“So you told him” “So I told him. I didn’t even spare Remus a fucking thought”. He looked back to his boots, yet again hiding his emotions with his hair. The bitter intonations on the last words were not lost on Minerva, she didn’t need to see his face this time to know what he feeling.

“And do you feel bad about it?” She asked, despite knowing the answer. She wouldn’t be here if he didn’t.

“Yes”. He looked up at her through his fringe. “Fuck its like… you know the feeling of when you fuck something up? When you do something wrong, and you know it’s going to come back to bite you in the ass?” She nodded. “Its like that. It’s like that but… fucking hell I don’t know… worse. Worse than you could ever imagine. Its like falling from a height and your stomach is in your knees except its that feeling every time I even think about him- about any of this. I’ll wake up tomorrow and I won’t be able to fucking stand myself. I’ll wake up tomorrow and my eyes will be glazed over and I won’t be able to see three feet in front of me ill be so lost in my own remorse- like at the start of the year, you remember?” His voice began to crack, and he continued through his tears. “I’ll wake up tomorrow and shit will hit the fucking fan and it will rain down on top of me and it will bury me and I won’t be able to breathe but fuck…I deserve it.”

He began to sob louder, his head between his knees and his eyes dripping tears onto the stoned floor, his vision blackening at the edges. Professor McGonagall didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know what had happened when Sirius suddenly wasn’t in any classes at the start of that year- she knew it was bad but she had no idea what had actually happened. They sat there for a long time, Sirius crying his guts out and Minerva in silence, turning over thoughts in her head. Eventually, when Sirius had appeared to have cried himself out, she spoke.

“I want you to read ‘Crime and Punishment’. Dostoyevsky.” She placed the book in his hands. “Its the Russian version” she added, as an afterthought. Sirius glanced at up her.

“Ive already read it.” He said, staring back at his hands. Minerva was taken aback.

“You’ve already- sorry, you’ve already read it?”

“Of course I’ve already read it. I read it when I was 13, for fucks sake.” He said this, too, with an air of indifference- as though every sane person had read Dostoyevsky by 13. Professor McGonagall couldn’t help but laugh.

“I should’ve known. God, you are a fucking enigma, Mr Black”.

“An enigma”, he huffed a laugh. “Never heard that one before.”

“I don’t care that you’ve already read it” she spared a glance at him. “I want you to read it again. I want you to write an essay on it, too- comparing your actions to the crime. You’re forgiving yourself.”

They were silent for a few beats as McGonagall stood up and brushed herself down. “Im giving you two weeks. Two weeks until you have to go back to the dorms- two weeks until you have to face Remus, and James, and Peter. Two weeks to learn from this whole experience. I know you’re not going to go back there any time before- I know you know better than that- better than to poke the sleeping dragon in the eye.” She smiled at her own joke. “But Sirius, after those two weeks, I want you to put it behind you. Im giving you two weeks to do all the dwelling you want, all the self deprecation. Two weeks two sort through your remorse. You don’t have to attend classes in that time, either. I’m giving you two weeks of self fucking reflection and you’re going to use those weeks and then you’re going to resume your life as it were before this whole situation. Things might not be the same, and thats okay. But you get two weeks, and then you have to start existing again.”

“Okay:”

And with that, her footsteps descended and she left behind her a 16 year old boy two wise for his own good, whose breathing had begun to quicken and whose thoughts had begun to swim. He’d begun to go numb to the pain, yet as soon as she left it had returned, rendering him unable to move for fear of himself. Sirius Black had his first of many panic attacks right then and there on the deserted butlers stairs behind the library, soundtracked to the ever fading footsteps of his fate. And, once the air had returned itself to his lungs and his tears dried completely, he took out his pocket knife from inside his pants and sawed away at the curtains that his his face. He hacked away at his hair until it closely resembled his brothers’- which hurt, a lot- and he began to cry once more despite the pounding in his head. he cried himself to sleep on the stairs, and when he awoke in the morning every part of his body was on fire but at least he could breathe again.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> james and sirius

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is super short hehe

02  
The library was deserted, save for a few Ravenclaw 7th years who Sirius had no interest in interacting with and who had no interest in interacting with him- which was lucky. He didn’t think he’d be able to speak even if he tried. It was 11 am, well into classes, and Sirius was completely numb. He recollected the previous nights events, recollected the burning sensation, recollected the feelings of horror he had with himself- yet he felt nothing, like he was floating. He didn’t like it one bit.   
The small table in the back of library where he was sat was almost completely in solitude, surrounded by shelves of books about magical law enforcement and magical history- nobody was going to be disturbing him there. Dostoyevsky was open before him, yet Sirius couldn’t bring himself to read a single word. The Russian stung, a bit. It reminded him just how alike he was to his mother. So he sat in silence, unable to find the energy to even get up and move, instead staring blankly at the jumble of words before him until they blurred and fat tears disrupted the pages on which they rested. He was there for a while, and by the time a familiar shadow appeared above him the page was soaked. Sirius wiped his eyes hastily on his sleeves. Shit.  
James sat opposite him.   
“Hi, James”, Sirius rubbed his cheeks and wiped his nose on his sleeve as he spoke.   
James’ words were as hard as his face. “Look at me”, he said, harshly. And, despite his strong desire to not, Sirius looked at him. They stared at each other for a beat, before James scrubbed his hand over his face and let out a sigh. “You’ve really fucked it up this time, Black”  
Sirius huffed a laugh. The room felt cold, the air still. “You think?”  
“What the fuck did you do to your hair”  
“I cut it”, said Sirius, relishing in the horrified look that crossed over James’ face. “The hair is probably still on the back stairs, if you wanna have a look”  
James raised an eyebrow, looking wearily at him, and Sirius felt his chest tighten under his best friends gaze.  
“James” he began, but was cut off.  
“Save it, Sirius.” all of a sudden James was angry. “I don’t wanna fucking hear it, okay? I don’t wanna fucking hear your apologies and your excuses and your bullshit anymore. Im done. Im fucking done. I don’t wanna see your face in the dorms, in the common room, in the hospital wing or anywhere fucking near Remus, you got it? You stay the fuck away from him”. He finished with a long sigh, however, as if it pained him to say those words. Sirius couldn’t help himself; he glared at James as he slowly enunciated his words.   
“Your upbringing may have been fucking fantastic, James,” he spat the name, “but it has most definitely stunted your emotional intelligence. My fucking brother is less stupid than you, and he once told me I should just try and be nicer to my parents. You’re a fucking idiot if you think I’m dim enough to show my face anywhere near any of you until Remus is ready to hear me out. A fucking idiot.”  
“Well, I don’t really know what you’re going to do anymore”, James spat back. “You’re fucking insane”  
Sirius laughed bitterly at that. “Tell me something I don’t know, Jamie.” Cruelly, he used his favourite nickname for James, and it had its desired effect- James looked down at his hands.   
“Look, James”, Sirius spoke softly, trying to regain eye contact with his best friend. “I know what I did. There’s no…changing… what I did. I know that. Its fine”. They were silent.   
“Except it’s not fine, is it” James grabbed Sirius’ wrist suddenly and ran his finger over the burns, looking up and staring into Sirius’ eyes solemnly. “Not for you. Not for me, or Pete, and especially not for Remus.”  
“But it’ll get better, won’t it?” Sirius hated the hopeful note that quivered on his words.   
“Maybe, eventually”  
James stood up abruptly, still holding onto Sirius’ hand. He looked at his feet, turning his thoughts over in his head, before looking back to Sirius, who had been studying him intently as he did so.  
“Im still your brother. Regulus, he- he isn’t- not anymore” James stumbled over his words as he spoke, yet never lost eye contact with Sirius. “Im always going to be your brother Sirius. I’ll always- always- be here, even now. I hate you at the moment, but I’m here. If ever you need.”  
And with that said, he dropped Sirius’ hand and turned to go to potions, barely catching the sob that filled the silence behind him.

**Author's Note:**

> i cant spell mgonagall pls dont bully


End file.
